No Arabic abstract
Speckle is maybe the most fundamental interference effect of light in disordered media, giving rise to fascinating physical phenomena and enabling applications in imaging, spectroscopy or cryptography, to name a few. While speckle formed outside a sample is easily measured and analysed, true bulk speckle, as formed inside random media, is difficult to investigate directly due to the obvious issue of physical access. Furthermore, its proper theoretical description poses enormous challenges. Here we report on the first direct measurements of intensity correlations of light inside a disordered medium, using embedded DNA strings decorated with emitters separated by a controlled nanometric distance. Our method provides in situ access to fundamental properties of bulk speckles as their size and polarization degrees of freedom, both of which are found to deviate significantly from theoretical predictions. The deviations are explained, by comparison with rigorous numerical calculations, in terms of correlations among polarization components and non-universal near-field contributions at the nanoscale.
We study the interference between two parallel-propagating Gaussian beams, originated from the same source, as their transverse separation is tuned. The interference pattern as a function of such separation lead us to determine the spatial coherence length of the original beam, in a similar way that a Michelson-Morley interferometer can be employed to measure the temporal coherence of a transform limited pulse. Moreover, performing a Fourier transform of the two-beam transverse plane, we observe an intensity modulation in the transverse momentum variable. This observation resembles the Alford and Gold Effect reported in time and frequency variables so far.
Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a powerful biomedical imaging technology that relies on the coherent detection of backscattered light to image tissue morphology in vivo. As a consequence, OCT is susceptible to coherent noise (speckle noise), which imposes significant limitations on its diagnostic capabilities. Here we show a method based purely on light manipulation that is able to entirely remove the speckle noise originating from turbid samples without any compromise in resolution. We refer to this method as Speckle-Free OCT (SFOCT). Using SFOCT, we succeeded in revealing small structures that are otherwise hidden by speckle noise when using conventional OCT, including the inner stromal structure of a live mouse cornea, the fine structures inside the mouse pinna, sweat ducts, and Meissners corpuscle in the human fingertip skin. SFOCT has the potential to markedly increase OCTs diagnostic capabilities of various human diseases by revealing minute features that correlate with early pathology.
Optical diffraction tomography (ODT) is a three-dimensional (3D) label-free imaging technique. The 3D refractive index distribution of a sample can be reconstructed from multiple two-dimensional optical field images via ODT. Herein, we introduce a temporally low-coherence ODT technique using a ferroelectric liquid crystal spatial light modulator (FLC SLM). The fast binary-phase modulation provided by the FLC SLM ensures a high spatiotemporal resolution with considerably reduced coherent noise. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed system using various samples, including colloidal microspheres and live epithelial cells.
A grand challenge in fundamental physics and practical applications is overcoming wave diffusion to deposit energy into a target region deep inside a diffusive system. While it is known that coherently controlling the incident wavefront allows diffraction-limited focusing inside a diffusive system, in many applications targets are significantly larger than such a focus and the maximum deliverable energy remains unknown. Here, we introduce the deposition matrix, which maps an input wavefront to its internal field distribution, and theoretically predict the ultimate limitations on energy deposition at any depth. For example, the maximum obtainable energy enhancement occurs at 3/4 a diffusive systems thickness: regardless of its scattering strength. Experimentally we measure the deposition matrix and excite its eigenstates to enhance/suppress the energy within an extended target region. Our theoretical analysis reveals that such enhancement/suppression results from both selective transmission eigenchannel excitation and constructive/destructive interference among these channels.
Significant enhancement of evanescent spatial harmonics inside the slabs of media with extreme optical anisotropy is revealed. This phenomenon results from the pumping of standing waves and has the feature of being weakly sensitive to the material losses. Such characteristics may enable subwavelength imaging at considerable distances away from the objects.